‘I nearly died’: Woman warns of risks after taking black-market skinny jab

A woman has claimed she may have suffered permanent liver damage after buying an unauthorised “skinny jab” through a “friend of a friend”, according to an investigation by BBC and the Save Face organisation.

The woman, from Liverpool, told the BBC she bought the black-market weight loss injection despite having a BMI below the approved threshold for weight-loss medication.

She said the drug caused her type 1 diabetes to ‘spiral out of control’ and may have permanently damaged her liver.

The woman, who asked not to be named, collapsed in A&E and was immediately taken to resuscitation, where she spent 18 hours.

She said: “It’s easy to get hold of it if you know the right person. You can see it everywhere and wherever you go people are talking about it.”

Weight-loss drugs are typically prescribed only to people with a BMI of 30, or 27 with a related health condition, and require a legitimate prescription. However, a growing black market has emerged, with some people turning to unregulated sellers because they either cannot afford the medication or do not meet the medical criteria.

There have been several cases across the UK and Ireland of people becoming seriously ill after taking unregulated weight-loss drugs.

Ashton Collins, co-founder and director of Save Face, told the BBC: “When people are buying products from places like China and Korea and importing them, they have no idea what is in them.

“In some cases, the products haven’t been tested. In others, they contain no trace of the GLP-1 peptide. We’ve even seen cases where substances such as windscreen wash were found.

“We need regulators, police and the MHRA to clamp down on these sellers, make real examples of them and punish them with the full force of the law before this reaches crisis point.”

The woman said that complications linked to her diabetes and the injection may result in long-term liver damage.

The BBC investigation highlighted how thousands of people across the UK are obtaining powerful weight-loss injections from unregulated sellers, often without medical checks, monitoring or aftercare.